God does not see the way we see, but I am convinced we can learn to see the way He sees. What we see changes the posture of our hearts. Seeing is not as natural as we think it is. We do not simply look with our eyes; we perceive with our hearts, and that is why I believe every one of us needs to learn to see.
Seeing Is Not the Same as Perceiving
I’m probably a bit of a geek, so forgive me if I geek out for a moment. A great deal of attention is being given to artificial intelligence, and I have no problem with AI. I have problems with people. It is a little like saying I have a problem with a gun. A gun has never killed anybody; a person has. AI is not intrinsically dangerous. It depends what you do with it.
My point is this. One of the things people have been working on for years is teaching computers how to see. Do you remember, perhaps ten years ago, logging into a website and being handed a strange little collection of letters and numbers? You had to copy them to prove you were a person and not a computer. If you have logged into anything in the last five years, you have probably noticed that test has largely disappeared.
What do they give you instead? A little grid of about twelve images, with an instruction: click on the three images that show stairs. Click on the three images that show a bicycle. You might not have realised it, but every time you did that, you were teaching a computer to recognise things. This is a bicycle. This is not a bicycle. This is a staircase. This is not a staircase.
We have come all the way from the earliest camera, a cardboard box with film inside it, to the digital camera that carries my voice and face to people all over the world. Yet it is one thing to see and simply capture what is seen. It is another thing entirely to understand it. We do see things, but we perceive them through our knowledge, through our understanding, through our experience, through our culture, and through a set of beliefs. As written in Proverbs 20:12, “The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both.”
Two Reports From the Same Land
Consider the twelve spies. Ten of them went into the Promised Land, and they saw it through the lens of it cannot be done. It’s too difficult. It’s too hard. We could never take this place. Joshua and Caleb walked through the very same land. They saw the same cities, the same giants, the same fruit, but they saw it all through the lens of our God is able.
Through our God we shall do valiantly. Through our God we can run against a troop and leap over a wall. The circumstances were identical; the perception was completely different. As Caleb said in Numbers 13:30, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.”
How David Saw Goliath
David looked at Goliath in the same way. He did not see in Goliath what everybody else saw. Others were focused on his muscles and his size, and their conclusion was simple: we cannot stand before him. David saw something else altogether. He saw an enemy of the armies of God, an affront, an assault, an insult to the very person and nature of God.
Because David had been looking at God so much, the posture of his heart was this: he cannot stand before us. As written in 1 Samuel 17:26, “For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” David’s heart had been shaped by what he had been gazing upon, and so he saw the giant differently from everyone else on that battlefield.
We Don’t Need to Change What We See
Here is the point I would love you to grasp. So many of us are looking at the circumstances around us, and we pray, “Lord, would You change things around me?” How many married people have prayed, “Lord, would You change my husband?” or “Would You change my wife?” We pray, “Change my nation. Change my president. Change my church. Change my finances.” There are a million things around us we would love God to change.
I want to tell you, beloved, we often treat prayer like a magic trick. The French speak of a baguette magique, a magic wand, as we would say in English. We come along, give it a whack, a little fairy dust falls, and everything changes. So many Christians are looking for God to change the things around them, when what God really wants to do is change things on the inside of our hearts.
Simply put, we don’t really need to change what we see. We need to change how we see. In a very real sense, I believe we need to come to the Lord and say, “Lord, teach me to see.” The disciples came to Jesus and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” In the same way, I believe we need to come and say, “Lord, would You teach me? Would You anoint my eyes with eye salve, that I may see?” As written in Revelation 3:18, “Anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.”
Let me challenge you to take a moment and pray in the Holy Spirit. Ask the Lord to give you a list of the main things you are looking at in your life, the things you see, and then the things you don’t see. It is amazing what we don’t see. It is amazing what we see but don’t perceive. It is amazing what is right there in front of us, and yet we take it for granted.
Touch My Eyes Again
Do you remember the blind man who was brought to Jesus? Jesus spat on his eyes, laid His hands on him, and then asked, “Do you see anything?” The man answered honestly and wisely: “I see men like trees, walking.” In other words, I can see, but only in a blurred way. He could see far better than he could five minutes earlier, but he did not yet see clearly.
I don’t want to add to the Scriptures, but imagine if this man, blind all his life, had said, “This is wonderful. This is the best I’ve ever seen. I’ll take it. Trees walking? I can live with that.” It was a vast improvement, after all. Yet he was honest enough to say, in effect, “We haven’t reached the destination yet. Touch me again.” As written in Mark 8:25, “Then He put His hands on his eyes again and made him look up. And he was restored and saw everyone clearly.”
I have a wonderful message for you: Jesus wants to touch your eyes again. I believe there are some of us who have been born again, enough to see the kingdom of God, but we haven’t yet seen all of the kingdom. We haven’t seen everything that is there. So many people come to the Bible, see one piece of truth, and completely ignore the other truths sitting right beside it. I am convinced we need God to anoint our eyes again, that we may see.
My prayer for you, and I would encourage you to pray it for yourself, is simply this: “Lord, open my eyes, that I may see.”
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Scriptures for Study
Proverbs 20:12, Numbers 13:30, Numbers 13:32–33, Numbers 14:6–9, 1 Samuel 17:26, 1 Samuel 17:45–47, Psalm 18:29, Revelation 3:18, Mark 8:22–25, Luke 11:1, John 3:3, Psalm 119:18, Ephesians 1:17–18, 2 Kings 6:17, Matthew 13:13–16, 2 Corinthians 4:18, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Hebrews 11:1, Isaiah 55:8–9, 1 Samuel 16:7, Proverbs 4:23, Romans 12:2, Matthew 6:22–23, John 9:25, 1 Corinthians 2:9–10
10 Questions for Reflection
- What are the main things you are looking at in your life right now?
- What might be right in front of you that you have been taking for granted?
- Through which lens do you tend to view challenges: “it cannot be done” or “our God is able”?
- How have your culture, experience and beliefs shaped the way you perceive situations?
- What “giant” in your life might look different if you spent more time looking at God?
- Which prayers of yours have been asking God to change your circumstances rather than your heart?
- In what ways have you treated prayer like a magic wand?
- Where do you see “men like trees, walking”, seeing something partially but not yet clearly?
- Which truths in Scripture have you tended to ignore while holding tightly to others?
- What would it look like to ask the Lord daily, “Teach me to see”?
